My piece at Ketagalan Media is on the Pingpuzu Aborigines included in Tsai Ing-wen's apology ceremony on August 1:

"When President Tsai Ing-wen made a historic apology to indigenous peoples on August 1, she addressed her remarks not only to the country’s 16 officially recognized aborigine (yuanzhumin 原住民) tribes but also to the “Pingpu ethnic group,” or Pingpuzu (平埔族) — descendants of Taiwan’s culturally assimilated indigenous peoples who are not officially recognized by the government as aborigines. In the flood of commentary that has followed Tsai’s apology, the presence of Pingpuzu representatives in the ceremony has attracted little attention.

Yet the inclusion of the Pingpuzu was a radical act—arguably the boldest aspect of the whole event. Every preceding government of Taiwan had refused to acknowledge Pingpuzuactivists’ claims to indigeneity. By explicitly mentioning them in her apology, President Tsai gave legitimacy to the idea that Taiwan’s “true” indigenous population — officially only about 530,000, or 2.3% of the total — is significantly larger than recognized."

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About Me

I am a political scientist by training, with interests in democratization, parties and elections, and the politics of new and developing democracies. My regional expertise is in East Asia, with special focus on Taiwan.